When a major figure in rock music passes away I typically put on their music as a form of tribute to gain final closure on their artistic significance. Lots of nonsense & false tributes get published after the fact, so doing this helps me gain clarity from media & industry bias. In the end it’s about the music, but I must confess that I’ve always struggled with Black Sabbath & Ozzy Osbourne, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
Black Sabbath & Led Zeppelin were the original UK heavy metal acts that formed in the late 1960’s and dominated AOR (album oriented radio) in the 1970’s. Both bands had their strengths & limitations, and honestly I always preferred Led Zeppelin, but I also have all the classic (Ozzy) Black Sabbath records so their legacy needs to be respected.
Black Sabbath had a great drummer in Bill Ward, and an amazing guitar player in Tony Iommi, with an adequate bass player in Geezer Butler who wrote good lyrics which is always welcome in any band. Add to this a frontman who couldn’t really sing in Ozzy Osbourne, who became the Prince of Darkness, and you have Black Sabbath. For me the best Black Sabbath songs include: “Paranoid”, “War Pigs”, “Fairies Wear Boots”, “Sweet Leaf”, “Into the Void”, “Supernaut”, and “Hole in the Sky”. Cover artwork was always a band weakness, as the blurred image on Paranoid (1971) is probably the worst album representation of a great rock record– ever.
Drugs & alcohol eroded the band’s power, and by the end of the decade Ozzy was kicked out for his excesses. He rebuilt himself as a solo act with an outstanding heavy metal outfit that included guitar prodigy Randy Rhoads, Rudy Sarzo on bass & drummer Tommy Aldridge. All this came to an end in Leesburg, Florida in 1982 when Rhoads was killed in a private plane crash under murky circumstances involving an unwell road crew member who piloted the plane while under the influence of drugs & alcohol. According to a Rudy Sarzo biography published in 2006, Randy Rhoads was killed trying to steer the homicidal pilot from kamikaze crashing his airplane into the band’s parked tour bus as he attempted to kill his ex-girlfriend inside. It’s this type of rock & roll excess that defined Ozzy’s controversial career, be it animal cruelty, drugs & other degenerate antics.
After the tragic death of Randy Rhoads, Ozzy became a parody of himself, with his 1980’s music bordering on embarrassment, but his persona always carried him through. In many ways Ozzy Osbourne personified the rock star whose primary talent was his persona. It carried him into reality TV and the creation of Ozzfest, a heavy metal festival which he repeatedly headlined. If less is more, then Ozzy Osbourne is probably the least talented rock artist of his era who (for better or worse) became a superstar. Since Ozzy’s music was so much about death & doom, it’s hard to deeply mourn his passing. In many ways he embraced death, so it is more of an inevitability then devastation for fans.
Final thoughts on persona
Ozzy Osbourne was above all a persona. When you become a performer for an audience you need to have an act. For Ozzy it was his persona as the Prince of Darkness. For all his limitations as a performer, Ozzy had “it,” that nebulous indefinable quality of being able to capture & hold an audience. Ozzy Osbourne was born to be a rock star, and probably couldn’t have been successful at anything else. Inspiration can be taken from that in that he knew exactly who he was and always stayed true to himself. People are drawn in by that because many don’t have the brains or guts to be who they really want to be.
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